Flash was useful, but developers are glad it’s on the death march

Adobe promises Retina support for Photoshop, other CS6 apps

The advent of Retina across Apple's iOS and Mac product lines has meant beautiful HiDPI displays for well-heeled owners -- and bountiful headaches for application developers who have to rework, revise and rebuild their products to take advantage of all those lovely little pixels. Key productivity and graphic arts tools have yet to make the Retina leap, but today Adobe announced that its customers won't have to wait much longer for support.

In posts on both the Photoshop.com and Creative Layer blogs, Adobe is promising an autumn 2012 rollout for Retina support in Photoshop CS6, and eventual Retina goodness "over the coming months" in Dreamweaver, Edge Animate, Illustrator, Lightroom, Prelude, Premiere Pro and SpeedGrade. The iPad image editor Photoshop Touch will also be getting tapped with the Retina wand.

While this enhancement plan doesn't currently cover a few essential CS apps (After Effects, Fireworks, Flash and InDesign are notably not listed), Adobe says it's "evaluating the roadmap for when other products may support HiDPI displays" and will update customers when those plans are firmed up. Participants in the company's $49/month Creative Cloud software rental setup will be getting updates and new features on an accelerated schedule, including some Illustrator bonuses released this week that are exclusive to the service.